Out back counting stars
by something someone said
Summary: "You're just like your brother," Ciel says, a bit of annoyance on his lips. It catches Luca off guard because no one's ever compared him to his brother before. It's always 'now I don't get why your brother can't be more like you' or 'I was scared for a second when I saw your name on the roster, but you're so much sweeter than he was.'


I wrote this a long time ago. I thought it might be interesting to make a modern Kuroshitsuji II AU. I thought it might be interesting to put references to 90s music that don't really need to be there. I wondered if Ciel and Alois would be just as miserable with parents and would fill the void with underage drinking and all that stuff that teenagers in those YA novels do. Anyway, this is my take on that.

* * *

_Teen Spirit_

2005

Alois says he'll call Claude as soon as he's eighteen. He'll go where he is and that'll be the end of it, he tells Luca, and then nobody can say anything and nobody will care because he's an adult and old enough to think for himself.

Not like two years ago, when he'd come back from Claude's house smelling weird and listen to his walkman, the same song playing over and over from his headphones, their mother yelling through the door. Luca didn't know what that smell was until he walked behind the gym after school and smelled it again.

Alois is sixteen now, in the basement, playing video games with him. Nirvana screams on the stereo and their parents aren't home. They microwaved chicken pot pies for themselves and the peas are still in the little tin they came in. Alois is winning, but he doesn't say anything about it.

It's a boring afternoon. They're still in that lingering daze from summer even though they've been in school for almost a week already. The air conditioner pumps cool air like it has done for the past two months, the lights are dimmed to their lowest level and the light from the little window by the ceiling is starting to glow orange. Luca wants to grab a soda from the refrigerator, but he doesn't want to give up on the game just yet.

"Who do you have for homeroom?" His brother finally asks.

It takes him a while to understand what his brother is saying, the game going and the AC groaning and Cobain screeching.

"Ms. Anafeloz. "

"That bitch?"

He shakes his head, "She's really nice. She lets us eat in class and everything."

His brother scowls, never turning his eyes from the TV. "You'll see," he says, "she's a real bitch."

Alois wins the round and Luca presses the button to continue, but his brother has already left the controller on the floor.

He's sitting on the futon behind him, his knees propped up, listening to the lyrics blasting from the speakers around the room. He looks up at the ceiling and doesn't turn away from it when he starts talking.

"You know this song isn't really about rape. Claude says it's about how Teen Spirit was so popular and it felt like people only wanted to hear that song." Even though Claude has been gone for a long time, Alois always describes his actions in present tense. Luca doesn't know what to think of it, so he doesn't think about it. "Claude says it better than I do though. It's easier to understand when he says things."

"Mmm?" Luca has quit out of multi-player mode and is playing by himself.

"Yeah. Claude says that's probably why the bastard killed himself. I don't know though. Yeah... It's almost the same riff if you listen carefully."

They listen but to Luca all the music sounds the same. Music from another decade that he didn't listen to when he was in an upstairs bedroom, someone's head between his thighs, so it doesn't mean anything to him. He keeps playing, hoping he'll be able to win against the computer at least.

Something with lots of distortion and lyrics that Luca can't make out comes on next so he stops listening intently. His brother has stacks of these mixed CDs that Claude's parents gave to him. Despite it all, he hears his brother try to sing the words. He can't match the tune so it comes out sloppily but his brother doesn't stop.

"This song, too, Claude says..." but Alois doesn't finish, so it's left lingering in the air like the hazy beat to the song.

They hear a car pull into their drive way and Luca hears his brother get up and walk up the stairs. He knows the sounds of his parents' cars. This sound isn't theirs. Alois almost smiles when he walks up the stairs. He hears his brother's high pitched 'happy' voice as the sound of the door swings open.

Luca can't really make out the words his brother says, only the laughter and footsteps of him and the other person.

"Come on." He hears his brother on the top of the basement stairs.

"It's disgusting down there." Luca recognizes it and looks up. Ciel Phantomhive stands on the stairs, a backpack in his hands. His brother has already made his way down.

"I don't know what you're talking about." Alois laughs it off.

Ciel Phantomhive used to be the smartest boy in Luca's school until he went on to high school. He's probably still the smartest kid at his new school. He used to hang around with Luca and his brother a lot during the summer and Luca doesn't even remember how they met in the first place. It seemed like Ciel had been coming down to their basement forever now, saying how disgusting it was, but sitting on the floor and playing video games with them anyway. Then Alois would stop playing and sit on the futon and Ciel would follow him. Luca wouldn't turn around. His brother would say in a breathy whisper that Luca could only hear if he listened real hard, above the AC and the music, "Claude does it like this," and things would get real quiet and Luca wouldn't turn around.

Ciel lays his backpack down and plays video games with Luca for a time as Alois watches from the side. Luca knows he can beat his brother, it's almost fifty-fifty for them, but he's never won against Ciel. Even his brother only beat him once or twice. But Luca likes playing with him anyway.

They go another round and Alois still hasn't joined them. "I'm getting something to drink," his brother says and goes up. He doesn't ask if they want something- anything.

Luca tries really hard to beat Ciel, he's almost mashing the buttons when the timer runs out and Ciel wins again. Luca leans back, lays on the carpet and looks at his fingers, cramped from the intense fight.

Ciel turns and looks down at him. His look is almost one of concern.

"It's nothing," Luca says. "Just tired. I've been playing since I got home from school." He doesn't want to play video games any more, but he will if Ciel wants to.

"Okay," Ciel says. He makes his way to the futon and sits down on it, but not before brushing off some crumbs from the cushion.

Ciel is small for a fifteen year old. Luca has already outgrown him, but then again, he's outgrown his brother too.

"Hey," Luca rolls over and says to him, "do you go to the same school as my brother now?" He's curious. He hasn't seen Ciel for two weeks.

"No. We're still in different schools," Ciel says intelligently. The way Ciel does everything, Luca imagines, is intelligently. His brother says Ciel's parents are university professors and he lives in a really nice house, one that has a library in it, books lining the shelves from wall to wall. Luca thinks it must have been his brother that met Ciel first. He knows so much about him.

"So you guys are still friends?"

"No," Ciel says sharply, "your brother and I aren't friends."

Luca doesn't have time to guess at Ciel's meaning as his brother comes down the stairs, a jar of jelly in his hands. "You stupid...," Ciel leers.

Alois walks to futon and sets the jelly on the table, the same where the tins with the peas still in them are. Ciel takes his backpack and unzips it and pulls out a bottle, some kind of alcoholic beverage, words in a different language and a picture as beautiful as a painting for the label.

"Stealing from daddy's liquor cabinet again hmm?" His brother asks in that sugar sweet sneering way.

Ciel shakes his head. "It's only because of Sebastian."

Whenever Ciel does something like this he says "It's only because of Sebastian. That guy." Luca had to ask who Sebastian was. "One of my dad's students. He's working on his thesis and is always at our house. I wish I could kick him out." And then his brother will laugh, "Oh I've seen this look before, Ciel. I know what's going on."

"What did Sebastian do today to deserve, oh what is this?" Alois asks gleefully, pronouncing the foreign words badly, taking the bottle, and inspecting it like how he saw those wine taster guys do on TV.

"It wasn't anything he did really," Ciel grumbles out, grinding his jaw, "It's my dad actually. Said Sebastian reminded him of when he was younger."

"And what's so bad about that?" Alois doesn't take his eyes off the bottle.

"My dad was top of his class when he was younger. Sebastian isn't even close to what my dad is. He's a fake." Ciel doesn't elaborate, but something is there, hidden in his glowering.

"Well here's to Sebastian," Alois uncaps the bottle. "May he always be a fake!" He tips the bottle and shouts "Cheers." He takes a swig, closes his eyes and swallows it down. Then he takes the back of his arm and wipes his mouth.

"Bleh, that's awful." He hands the bottle to Ciel and sticks out his tongue.

Ciel has a more distinguished way of drinking it, but he still grimaces as it goes down.

The whole exchange takes up the chorus of one of his brother's (Claude's really) grungy alt rock songs. Luca is still laying on the floor, watching the two of them.

"You want some Luca?" His brother offers, holding the drink out.

"Don't give that to him." Ciel takes the bottle back and tips his head back but then shakes his head. "I hate drinking this way. Don't you have a tumbler?"

"Tumbler?"

Ciel sighs and asks for a drinking glass. Luca is on his feet before his brother is.

"You don't have to." But Ciel stays seated and so does Alois, so Luca goes to the kitchen to get one.

He isn't gone for long but by the time he gets back Ciel's shirt is off and his brother is licking the jelly off his neck saying "Claude's favorite is honey, but we don't have any." Luca doesn't think they'll need the glass so he returns it to the kitchen and watches TV in the living room.

After a while he hears the water run in the bathroom. Then it stops and the door to the front is swung open and a car starts.

Their parents get home a little after that and when Luca has to call his brother up for dinner he finds him laying on the futon, a pillow in his arms like he's holding someone and the melodic hums of Radiohead covering the room in lullaby.

* * *

_Hunger Strike _

Ciel comes over the next Sunday. He says Sebastian (that damn guy) and his father went out golfing. He pulls out an Arnold Palmer and pours red labeled vodka into it. He shares it with Alois and sits back on the futon, an action as lethargic as the afternoon is.

They're watching a movie, but Luca can't remember the name of it anymore. Only that it's an older movie that's being broadcasted on TV and the commercials are longer than the movie segments.

"This sucks," his brother says to no one in particular.

When no one answers he takes another sip of the drink. "Ciel, I want to try that one with the crown on it. The one in the pretty bottle."

"That's too expensive. They'll notice."

"So even you have standards when it comes to_ that_?"

"Shut up."

Luca wanted to invite his friend Richard over today, but Richard kept refusing for some reason so he eventually gave up. He didn't think too much of it, just wondered why. And so he asked by their lockers, the weekend only a bus ride away.

"It's because of your brother," Richard muttered under his breath, like he was apologizing for breaking a crayon in kindergarten.

"I don't understand."

"My brother won't let me hang out with you because he hates your brother," Richard said in the same voice, then softer, "He thinks he's a weirdo." And Richard apologized and closed his locker slowly.

"No. It's okay," Luca said quietly. He tried to smile. "I don't really care. Really. It's okay."

"It's _sooooo_ boring." His brother groans again and Luca hears Ciel say something under his breath.

"Whatever." His brother jumps off the futon and goes up the stairs, but not before flipping Ciel off. Luca turns to Ciel, not sure how he'll take it, or even what's going on, but Ciel is still watching the movie and there's no sign that he's even angry about it in the first place.

Luca tries to return to the movie, but he's not even sure if he's watching it or another commercial. "Hey," he says weakly but then raises his voice a little higher, "can I try some of that?"

He wants to try the tea on the table, the one Ciel loaded with vodka. Not for any reason in particular. Just because he's curious and there's not much to do besides.

"You want this?" Ciel motions to the drink and Luca nods.

"Are you sure?" Ciel questions again and this time Luca takes it in his hands and nods, trying his hardest to look like he really wants it.

Ciel sighs. "Try some. Only a little at first though." And Luca brings it to his mouth, the same bottle that his brother and Ciel have drank from, and takes a sip. It's not enough to get a real taste so he takes a longer sip and it hits him. It's like drinking fire. Lemonade and iced tea fire. He doesn't even know how it's possible but it goes burning down his mouth straight to his heart. He coughs and Ciel asks if he's okay but he nods and coughs some more.

"How old are you again?" Ciel asks.

"Th-thirteen," he gasps.

Ciel mutters an _honestly_. Luca wonders how long Ciel has been drinking this stuff.

He wants to ask Ciel if he really thinks his brother is a weirdo, because he's the one who would know, but he doesn't think it's the right time so he just takes another sip and gets braver and braver, tilting the bottle like how he saw his brother drink it. "Slow down." Ciel warns.

He breathes hard. It burns, it burn, but then he feels a lightness in his head and a warmth in his belly and he knows why people drink this.

"That's enough." Ciel takes the bottle from him. He shakes his head and looks at him disapprovingly.

"There's something else I wanted to try." Luca feels that vertigo in his head, the world floating higher. He inches closer and looks at Ciel's fingers, a half-closed fist, nails well maintained. "It's nothing. Nevermind." He giggles.

Ciel shakes his head again, "honestly."

"I'm going to get water. Do you want something?" Luca stands.

"No."

"Okay." He's afraid Ciel might leave. He doesn't even know why he's afraid of that.

He makes it to the top of the stairs and turns into the kitchen. Alois is standing at the sink, staring out the window that faces the street.

Luca pulls out a glass from the cabinet and he turns around quickly, like he's surprised. "Oh Luca. It's just you." And he smiles sadly and Luca knows what's wrong and he knows it's not the right time to speak about it. Not yet. Not now.

He watches the rest of the movie with Ciel.

Then, when it's over, Ciel leans back and looks like he might be falling asleep. Luca moves closer. "I want to try something."

"Hmm?"

"Does it feel good?"

And now Ciel is awake. "What?"

"The stuff you and my brother do. It must feel good if you keep coming back even though you guys aren't friends."

He sees Ciel's face start to redden and his words come out all stammered, "Well... I... It's..."

"Does it?" Luca asks again and he can tell Ciel doesn't want to tell him. He keeps his mouth in a tight line and Luca wishes he would just cross that line already.

"You're just like your brother," Ciel says, a bit of annoyance on his lips. It catches Luca off guard because no one's ever compared him to his brother before. It's always 'now I don't get why your brother can't be more like _you_' or 'I was scared for a second when I saw your name on the roster, but you're so much sweeter than _he_ was.'

And those well-maintained fingertips ghost over his waist. It feels strange, his skin jumps and he doesn't want to move, but he wants to squirm all over. Ciel's fingers move down and then Luca moves back.

"What?"

"Sorry. It's just a little... I'm ticklish." Luca bursts out in an unsteady stream, but he's not sure if it's a lie or the truth.

"It's fine," Ciel says and turns his attention to the television.

"No." And Ciel glances at him again. "I mean, I want to try still."

Ciel looks him over and Luca's sure he's lost his chance.

"Maybe later," Ciel says in that guttural tone of his that means 'maybe never.' And maybe he's just a little too young and Ciel has a little more of those standards than he admits he has. Maybe he should just give up and call his brother down because _he_ would know what Ciel wants.

Maybe things are fine the way they are now, watching movies in the basement on a hot afternoon.

But Luca captures Ciel on the lips and the connection is like mentos and coke, a straight burst to all those magical places on the body that ignite when someone gets too close. He presses down and his teeth make that clicking noise on Ciel's. He wonders how long this kind of thing is supposed to last. If he's supposed to work his arms up Ciel's shirt or if he should just hold him. His lips vibrate. But Ciel pushes back. His hands are on his shoulders until he's sitting upright again and Ciel has his sleeve to his mouth and is wiping off the spit.

Things are still for that moment. Luca doesn't even want to breathe, they're so still and he wants to hold on to that vibration that's still on his lips.

"Sor-sorry," Luca finally manages.

"You're not sorry." Ciel turns away from him so he can't read his expression. "Just like your brother."

And this time Luca isn't surprised about it at all, because Ciel is the smartest kid he knows.

Ciel doesn't say anything about it after that. It's almost like he pretends it didn't happen when Alois comes down and says it's too quiet, puts music on and Ciel says, "not that crap again."

But his brother just laughs it off. Maybe they have a relationship that Luca can't quite understand because there's no word for it in the English language.

Male vocals start screaming and it's time that Luca caught up on his math homework so he leaves to go upstairs. There's nothing he wants to think about and there's nothing he _has_ to think about except the rigid conformity of math homework and how long it'll be 'til dinnertime. Hedoes not want to think about Ciel Phantomhive. _Definitely not. _

* * *

_Creep_

"Nothing ever happens here," Ciel says. "It's boring."

It's a Wednesday. This time Ciel didn't say why he came over. He just turned up on the doorstep when Luca was expecting his mom and you don't turn away a person like Ciel Phantomhive no matter how weird you become around them.

And Luca had to explain that his brother was in detention and what for he doesn't know but Ciel went down into the basement anyway.

"I like it here." Luca says, just to be contrary, because he thinks Ciel wants to debate it with him. "It's nice."

"You probably haven't seen much of anything else."

"Nope," Luca shakes his head. "Never left the country."

"Hmm." Ciel makes that noise between his lips and Luca guesses that wasn't the answer Ciel was expecting. The drum beat of the song that they're listening to is like the ticking of the clock, ticking down to when his brother will get home and Ciel probably won't be so bored anymore and Luca will have to look away and pretend he's interested in something else. "But I would like to get out of here though. I want to see more things," he adds. He would add that when he was little he liked to pretend he was an airplane traveling the world and looking down at all the people like ants on the sidewalk, but Ciel doesn't seem the type for sappy stories.

"Foreign places are overrated," Ciel sighs into the futon.

"Hey," Luca nudges forward. "I want to try again."

The look Ciel is giving him right now reminds him a lot of the beach. The last time he went to the beach he got sandblasted something terrible, and Ciel's look is something like that-hard and stinging. Luca gets goosebumps imagining it, the beach and Ciel and sand and how hot it might be and how cold that glare is.

"When is your brother coming home?" Ciel asks, and Luca is back in the basement and the AC is nothing like being at the beach.

"Pretty soon I think."

Ciel nods and turns his attention away from him. He brought his bag today, but he doesn't pull out anything with alcoholic content in it. It's a book and Ciel's fingers turn the pages like he's not in the room.

"C'mon. Please," Luca says again. He leans over. The book looks pretty complex, musings upon musings from a tortured soul.

Ciel sighs. "Fine." The book snaps shut and they kiss. It's not the same as before. This time is deeper. They keep their lips locked for longer and Luca moves his head, tries to find which angle is the best, like those actors in movies do. Then Ciel breaks away and a trail of spit follows him. Luca watches it disappear into nothing.

For a while Ciel just breathes. There's a faint blush on his cheeks and his eyes are a little watery. It almost looks like he's in pain, but Luca doesn't want to say anything that would ruin the moment. There's a tingling sensation deep down that leaves him feeling dizzy.

They make out like that again and eventually he's pushed Ciel into the futon. Luca wonders how nice it would be if he could do this all day. Still, there's something more he wants.

Ciel eventually breaks away and this time it's for real. He fixes his hair and adjusts his collar and in a moment all the evidence of their affair is groomed away.

"That felt good," Luca says.

Ciel doesn't say anything and returns to his book. Then they're once again two strangers, sitting in a basement together. Eventually, Alois comes home and erases all the tension with his crass way of doing things. And Luca thinks he might be grateful for that, but he might be jealous too.

Much later, Luca takes a shower. He scrubs the body wash on himself, all over, and lingers for a time on that warm deep place with visions of Ciel.

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees a spider, tinier than his pinky nail, trying to climb the tiles. It's too wet to climb so it always falls to the grouting between, but still it tries. Luca doesn't smoosh it with his thumb. He remembers his first grade teacher telling him that if there were more spiders in the world there probably wouldn't be so many bugs.

He keeps on looking at it. He wonders how his eyes can make out its tiny eight legs. Even when the water turns cold and his mother is knocking at the door, "the water bill is already too high and your father is this close to being laid off," he still looks at it. Only when it disappears in a crack in the wall does he turn off the water and step out, water running down his legs. Maybe Ciel's fingers feel like this, cool and smooth, sending shivers to places in between.

When he leaves the bathroom, he walks straight down the hall. He shares a room with his brother. There's an empty room with a bed in it across the hall and there's a basement downstairs, but since times he can't remember Luca's always shared a room with his brother. He forgets which one of them was afraid of the dark first, but all of a sudden it was there like a fever and Luca was running across the hall to his brother's room in the middle of the night. His parents eventually converted his room into a storage closet and everything he owned was stacked against a wall right next to his brother's stuff.

"I borrowed your shirt," Alois says from his bed, his head stuffed in a pillow. "All my shirts were dirty."

"You can keep it if you want," Luca says. He recognizes that shirt, from last Christmas. Some gift from someone somewhere that he casually tossed aside. He tried wearing it a few times, but red just wasn't his color. It looks good on Alois though. He can make red work.

"I'll give it back later."

"It doesn't matter. Either way." And it feels weird to even say such a thing, because for as long as he could remember, he and his brother have shared everything. There was no line that signified the boundary between his side of the room and his brother's. It was the same for clothes. He wanted to think it was the same for everything. He knows it's not now.

"Hey, can I sleep in your bed tonight?" Luca ventures. He wants to make sure.

"Mmm." Alois makes that noise from his pillow and then rolls over. His hair is a mess but he sits up and saunters to the other bed in the room. There he turns away and says, "Goodnight, Alois." Luca smiles at the in-joke, words only he and his brother could possibly understand.

"Goodnight, Luca," he says as he plunges into bed.

But he also wants to be Alois for just tonight. He wants to imagine the way Ciel tastes and feels, a memory of lips and whispers and laughter.

Just tonight, he wants to be his brother.

He's never wanted anything more.


End file.
